


A Swift Fierce Pleasure

by Sineala



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Community: kink_bingo, Furry, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 00:25:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bericus was minded of his wolf often.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Swift Fierce Pleasure

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kink Bingo 2012; the square is "plushie or furry kink." Beta and character names by Carmarthen. Almost all the named characters in FW are officers; I invented a few OCs here, but Garwin, Bericus, and Vedrix are all canonical. Vedrix is an optio by the time we meet him in canon, but this is set during Gavros' command; I figure he was promoted sometime.
> 
> Additional warning: Story contains animal harm (death of a wolf); if you've read the book, you know what you're in for here.

Bericus was minded of his wolf often. Not every day, certainly, but those nights on sentry duty, when the chill of the air cut his skin and the wind came howling over the hills sounding like a pack in tongue itself... well, on those days, how could a man -- how could any man of the emperor's own Frontier Wolves -- not think about the beast who was even now, in its own death, warding him from the cold?

He had tried to ask Garwin, once, partway through one of those long watches. Garwin had not been one of the optiones then, only an ordinary soldier, but he had all the same served longer than Bericus. 

Even in the flickering torchlight, he could see the man's face twist into a disapproving frown. "I am afraid I don't understand you," he said, and the despairing look in his eyes was one that Bericus had often seen from the junior centenarius to the senior, though Bericus did not think he said things that were ever as outrageous as some of the words he had heard Gavros' second-in-command utter. But it seemed that he had. "Are you saying," Garwin asked, and his voice was very careful and even, almost as one speaks to a child-- "that you think yourself a wolf?"

"No!" But he had said it too fast, and now the man must think him mad indeed. "I know I am a man. I was only thinking... do you not wonder about the wolf you killed?"

Garwin was still staring. "What of it, man? He put up a fair fight, he's dead, and I'm warm now. What else matters?"

Everything, everything, he wanted to say, angrily, but he knew he could not explain it. Had Garwin not felt anything different at all the day he had stood with the hunting-spear in his fist and looked eye-to-eye with the last wolf he would ever kill, the one who would die for him?

"Nothing," he mumbled, and turned away from the torches.

* * *

It was still cold when Bericus woke the next morning. At the other end of the barracks, Fergal and the new man -- Sabinus, he thought -- were sifting through the ashes of last night's fire on the stones, trying to kindle a new one so they could break their fast with something warm. Even as Bericus lay under the blankets, his breath fogged out into the air, and he realized that he had pulled his cloak over himself as he slept, and the gray-brown fur had nestled softly against his cheek, almost like a living thing.

The wolf would have understood, he thought, sleepily, his head still clouded with dreams, chasing scents through a forest. He had seen it in the creature's eyes, the instant before the blade slid through his heart. They would be together. A pack.

He had not bothered to open his eyes yet, and shortly he found that there was greater utility in that, as the men began to talk in low whispers. And then he heard his own name.

"Who's the lump still sleeping?" Sabinus had said -- sneered, really -- in his unpleasant voice. 

Fergal glanced dismissively back. Fergal had never liked him, he knew; it was enough that Fergal was of the Dalriads and he the Votadini, but he thought perhaps there was more than that. Not that he would ever know; the last time Fergal had bothered to talk to him off-duty was the time two years ago when they danced the Bull Calves and it had ended with Bericus' fist in Fergal's face. "Him? That's Bericus. The Emperor's hard bargain, we call him, as if a man with that name didn't need more help. He's a strange one, lad."

"He's cuddling his cloak."

"I said he was strange," Fergal repeated.

Sabinus harrumphed and turned back to the fire.

When the duty optio dragged Bericus out of bed an hour later, he was ordered onto barley rations for a full two weeks, but it was worth it not to have to face Fergal at that moment.

* * *

Winter was a slow, sluggish time, and each day he wore the cloak, he thought of his wolf, who had spent the winters curled up safely in a den, snug and warm, certainly warmer than the drafty pile of stone that was Castellum. Garwin looked askance at him every time they were on watch together. Bericus, for his part, stood quietly and pretended not to care.

Surely someone, one of the Wolves, anyone -- surely they would understand him. Surely the experience had changed them. Surely someone else knew now that they were both a wolf and a man.

When the weather began to grow warm, he tracked through the slush all the way up to the Lady's black stone, worn smooth from the hands and the prayers of all the men, and wrapped both his arms around it, turning his face to press his cheek against the cold stone, the chill running all through him.

_Please_ , he thought, but he did not know what he was asking, and if any goddess heard him, none gave a sign.

* * *

In the spring everything warmed, and, quite unexpectedly, his blood warmed with it. Bericus had never been overly fond of the women's huts; with their pay forever in arrears, it was a waste of money, if nothing else. But this year -- ah, this year, he could feel everything coming to life around him, the trees, the flowers, and even, he very quietly admitted to himself, the animals. It was well to celebrate that, wasn't it?

He didn't ask the girl's name. He didn't really want to know. He handed over a few coins, overpaying for certain.

"Thank you," she said. Her golden hair dangled in her face as she bent over to put the money in a chest, and Bericus wondered what it would feel like between his fingertips, whether it would be fine and downy-soft, like undercoat. Then he realized he was probably supposed to be admiring the view as her tunic fell forward, and he hastily shifted his gaze.

She held out a hand and drew him forward to the bed, draping herself back across it in a pose that was, he thought, supposed to be seductive. But it was all wrong.

"No," he said, roughly. "Not like that."

She paused in the middle of undressing, her tunic clutched in her lap. "Then what?"

"Hands and knees."

He knew he sounded uncaring, but he could not bring himself to say anything further as the young woman shuffled about on the creaky bed, turning, awkwardly presenting herself. "Like this, soldier?" She looked back over her shoulder and gave him a smile. It was probably supposed to be alluring.

Bericus stared down at her, at the high curve of her buttocks, almost right, and his mind swirled with more things that he could not say. Wait, he wanted to say, and he pictured her lying on his cloak. Wearing his cloak. Him, wearing the cloak -- and, oh, how had he never thought of that? It was at once right and wrong and not what he wanted at all, except it was. But with her it was wrong, somehow. He knew that much.

"Keep the money," he said, hurriedly, stepping backwards and reaching as always for his cloak. "Keep it all."

* * *

The junior centenarius came to stand watch with him a few times, and Bericus did not even bother asking. He was fairly certain that neither the man's beloved Georgics nor the teachings of his god covered this situation, and if they did, they were not likely to say anything kind.

* * *

When the new recruits came, toward the end of spring, among them was a southerner by the name of Vedrix. He had been a thief in his old cohort, the rumors said, and indeed he looked like one, small and crafty, with a sharp smile and an even sharper scar down along his jaw. If there was one thing men didn't like, it was a thief -- but Bericus had nothing worth stealing, and somehow the rumor only made him like the man better. Let them both be ill-named together.

Stranger, still, it seemed that Vedrix liked him back.

"So what did you take, that they sent you here?" he asked, one day, as they sat together in the sunlight, Bericus hammering out the worst of the dents in his helmet.

Vedrix looked up and grinned. "Everything I could get my hands on."

Bericus was supposed to be afraid, he knew, but he only grinned back. "Oh, really?"

When he awoke the next morning, his armor-chest was gone. His boots were gone. His blankets were gone. Even the pillow that had been under his head had been snatched away, and he hadn't even noticed. But he was still clutching his cloak, he found. Sabinus and the rest were smirking at him behind their hands, in between bites of gruel.

When they had left, the barracks were empty of everyone... except Vedrix.

"I didn't try to take your cloak," he said, and his voice was low and serious. "I knew you'd kill me if I did."

He knew. He couldn't know all of it, of course, but-- he knew.

It made even showing up to morning-muster clad only in a loincloth and a cloak bearable. And Vedrix only laughed when he came back to his cot in the evening and found one of the watchdog's new pups busily worrying at the edge of his pillow with its teeth. The rest of the men were laughing too, but Vedrix caught his eye and gave him the tiniest of nods.

* * *

He began to see, then, the new men come back from a day's hunt, their wolfskin draped over their horses, grinning proudly. They were Frontier Wolves now.

None of them were Vedrix.

"I haven't gone," Vedrix said, uncomfortably, kicking at a stray cobblestone. The question had upset him, and Bericus wondered if he should not have asked it. "I can tell that it is... customary... for a man to go after a wolf with a friend, and no one has asked me."

Bericus held out his hand and offered what he had never offered to any of the soldiers. "I'm asking."

* * *

The hunt went well enough; it was not long before they spotted a fine creature, brindled grey, high-stepping and elegant, and they ran him into the ground, backing him down a little ravine.

The rest was Vedrix' to do, and he stepped back and watched Vedrix balance the spear in his hand. He and the wolf stood there, watching each other, for a long while, so long that Bericus feared he would not do the thing. And then he watched Vedrix whisper words he could not hear. Vedrix thrust the spear forward unerringly and shut his eyes. It was quick, and the wolf did not suffer.

But instead of pulling the spear out, Vedrix knelt down, pitching forward into the grass, and Bericus ran to him.

When Vedrix looked up, his face was streaked with tears. "O my brother," he whispered, in British, and he was not speaking to Bericus. "I have stolen many things, but never a life. Not like that."

"He is yours now," Bericus said, quietly. "You are his. I am not sure which."

Vedrix' face was still twisted in anguish, and Bericus hastily began to skin the wolf before the pelt could be ruined. They must not waste this, after all. "How do any of them bear it?" asked Vedrix. "How do you?"

"I do not know how they bear it," Bericus said as he worked his knife through the bloody mess, "but as for me, I do not bear it well. No doubt you have noticed."

Vedrix said nothing.

When they were done, they washed in the nearby stream. Vedrix put the hide across his pony's withers and made ready to mount, but then stopped. His face was pale and determined.

"Put your cloak on," he said.

Of course Bericus liked wearing it, but he felt strange inside to do it because he was asked to, and even stranger still at the queer way Vedrix was looking at him.

"No, higher," Vedrix said, and he pulled it up until the ears were atop his head, the way he liked to wear it when no one was around.

"Like this?" he asked, and he would have looked away, but then Vedrix smiled at him.

He had a pleasant smile, now, nothing like a thief's. "It's like that, is it?" he murmured, stepping closer. "Finally. I see it."

Bericus tilted his head.

"The wolf in you." He grinned again. "We're all wolves now, after this. It's all right. And I think you should--" suddenly the grin had teeth in it-- "do what you want. It will be well."

Vedrix took another step, put a hand on Bericus' skin, another hand in his fur, and kissed him. And although Vedrix' hands were on him, he was surely a poor thief now, for he had stolen nothing from Bericus that he had not given back a thousandfold better.

**Author's Note:**

> The title has been borrowed from Chapter 5 ("Wolfskin"): "And the moment of grief passed from Alexios, giving place to a swift fierce pleasure. He had his wolfskin cloak!"

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Their Loyalties With Them](https://archiveofourown.org/works/636506) by [Carmarthen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen)




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